


The Final Flight

by runswithscissors



Category: Original Work, post-apocalypse - Fandom
Genre: Apocalypse, Everything is gone, Fireflies, Flying, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lightning - Freeform, Post-Apocalypse, Sneaking Out, Something's Not Right, jumping off things, lonely, naps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 16:38:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10994802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runswithscissors/pseuds/runswithscissors
Summary: After sneaking out to go watch a lightning storm, you fell asleep. For an incredibly long time. You're ready to head home when you wake up, but you discover that something changed while you were sleeping. . .





	The Final Flight

I quietly closed my window and checked my bag one last time. Flashlight, blanket, water bottle, compass, tomorrow’s breakfast, and my trusty knife hidden in my pocket. I crawled through the window and slid down the ladder propped against the porch roof, quickly leaning it up against the shed before setting off towards the woods. After about an hour I stopped, contemplating the house before me. It had been there since before my grandparents were born, but few remembered it. It was nothing more than a desolate sanctuary for the wildlife now. In a way, it was beautiful, giant oak trees intertwining with the skeletal frame of the house. On clear nights, it was easy to make out the shape of each leaf by the light of the stars.  
I pushed open the door, and cautiously made my way up the stairs, like so many times before. As I made my way up to the roof, and over to the corner beneath the biggest oak tree, I could hear something rustling through the leaves on the trees. After laying my blanket down, and stashing my bag in the crook of one of the branches, I settled in for the night. It was only a few minutes before the lightning started. The sky disintegrated into visual chaos, inky blackness and diamond-like stars doing battle with blinding flashes of lightning shooting out from fissures in the clouds. Just beyond the edge of the roof, fireflies danced through the air, slowly flickering in and out of existence. Hours later, after the lightning had stopped and I lay there watching the stars, the fireflies made their way closer, glowing brighter and brighter. They seemed to be moving in unison, a choreographed dance just for me, swirling and twinkling and making the most intricate patterns.  
It was the silence that woke me. I knew immediately that something wasn’t right. It was too cold for the middle of August, and there was snow on the ground. As I looked closer, I realized it wasn’t snow, but ash. The trees were splintered, fragmented into tiny pieces that lay on the ground. The worst part though was the silence. It was deafening. I finally got myself together and went to gather up my supplies, but they were gone. I looked closer and realized that they weren’t actually gone, but were now inside the tree. It had grown around my bag, and only a corner was still uncovered. Something was definitely wrong here. As I turned to go, I realized that the stairs were gone, completely rotted away. That left just the tree as a means of escape. Ten minutes, two giant bruises, and numerous cuts later, I was on the ground with only my blanket and my knife. When I looked around, I realized that nothing looked the way it had last night. My compass was now stuck inside a tree, so I set off the way I thought led back towards home. It seemed like I walked for hours, but when I checked my watch, it was no longer working. My feeling of unease grew- I had replaced the battery a week earlier, with one guaranteed to last at least five years. Eventually, the landscape became more familiar, but all of the buildings were gone. Soon I came to the cracked, crumbled remains of a paved road, and followed that back to my house. Actually, I followed it to what used to be my house. There was nothing left but a few stones of the foundation. Where my bedroom used to stand, a layer of ash sat in its place. That was when I finally realized what it all meant- the snow that wasn’t snow, the too-cold-for-August weather. It should have been obvious, in retrospect. This was what the scientists called a nuclear winter. Somehow, on the roof of a dilapidated old house in the woods, I had slept through the end of the world. And survived.  
I was officially on my own. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, not even an idea of how to survive. So I kept walking, following what was left of the road, past the emptiness that used to be full. Past the bakery where I had my first job. Past my best friend’s house. Past all the buildings that had been vaporized, the only proof they ever existed locked away in my memory. I passed what used to be the county line, and kept on walking. It might have been hours, or it might have been days, but I finally found it- the ledge that jutted out over Sandy Peak. I walked out to the edge, and stood, wrapped in my blanket, gazing out over the murky water below. As far as I could see, it was the same. A world with no color, as if something had sucked it dry of the saturation it once possessed. A coating of ash clung to the once vibrant cliffs in the distance. Nothing moved in this world without color. Nothing made a sound. I had inherited a world of silence.  
It was then that I truly understood the gravity of my situation. No way to obtain clean water, no plants to forage, or animals to hunt for food. For the first time in my life, I was completely alone. No one to tell me what I had to do, no longer required to go to school, or clean my room, or do so many other things that seemed silly, now that the world had become a desolate wasteland.  
I started to become angry. Why me? Why had I survived? Why was it me stuck on this godforsaken planet with no way to stay alive? What about all of my plans? I was going to become a pilot and fly around the world. Planes, blimps, hot air balloons, as long as I was in the air I would have been happy. Instead, I was stuck on the ground until I succumbed to starvation, dehydration, or some horrendous form of radiation poisoning. Maybe even a combination of all three with my luck.  
Then, standing there on the edge of the rock, I remembered something. It must have been something I read somewhere- that falling is just like flying. The only difference is the ending, and if you want to fly badly enough, that won’t stop you.  
I couldn’t get this out of my head. What if just for a few moments, I could fly? The more I thought about it, the more I relished the thought. The ledge I stood on jutted out over the water as if nature had intended it to be used for a runway. I turned and walked back the way I had come, counting off two hundred steps. It was here I stopped and turned, facing my newfound runway. I dumped my blanket on the ground and took a deep breath. I took off running, legs pumping harder than they ever had, propelling me forward, my lungs burning from the dust in the air. Reaching the edge, I launched myself off and spread my arms as if they were wings.  
I closed my eyes, listening to the wind rushing in my ears. For a moment, I was flying. I had never felt so alive.


End file.
